Stephen Hawking warns that great technological advances can leave most people "miserably poor."

The well-known British physicist and author said technology is partly to blame for the rise in income inequality.

"Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution," he said in a Reddit AMA (ask me anything) post last week.

"So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality," Hawking said.

It all comes down to how the gains are distributed between the rich and the poor.

It's a hot debate among economists and in Silicon Valley where the rising wealth of young tech workers stands out starkly against the mostly minority low income communities in San Francisco.

Hawking is right on this one, not Andreessen

Hawking wins this round, according to most experts.

There's little doubt that technology has driven economic growth in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. It's why so many countries are trying to replicate Silicon Valley on their own turf.

But while the pie is growing, not everyone is getting more of it.

"My reading of the data is that technology is the main driver of the recent increases in inequality. It's the biggest factor," Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management, told "Technology Review."